The greatest lie ever told

I don't like talking to self-assured adults. They complain about their dull, banal problems and like to point out how much life experience they have to back up their arguments. What I saw back in Turkmenistan this summer was especially bad. The men took up the role of stoic-diplomat-on-vacation, walking around the pool with four cell phones allotted to their four different businesses while wearing very form-fitting underwear, and the women, when they weren't busy gossiping with each each other about what shade of beige is in this year (I'm dead serious), took precious minutes teaching their kids inverted morals to ensure that they grow up to be just like their parents. They all look hard for cliches and punchlines and idioms to appear intelligent to their aristocrat friends, whose brains just as equally epitomize degradation.

The greatest lie ever told is that life has meaning and adults know what it is. The problem is that by the time you realize this, it's too late: you've already spent your best years setting materialistic goals and slaving away toward a sugary future outlined by your parents (work hard in school -> work harder in college -> land a six-digit job -> success), and now you're thirty-something and no closer to enlightenment than you were ten years ago. Then you either end up with a special type of depression known as a mid-life crisis and desperately try to gain back lost time, or you can take your frustration out on your kids by letting the lie live on.

Does life have meaning, and does anyone know what it is? A popular opinion seems to be that we're brought into the world to find happiness. The problem with that theory is that it doesn't bring you any closer to being happy or to figuring out that which will make you happy. And if there are any adults worth talking to about this business, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting them.


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On art

Warning: do not attempt to read this post if you are excessively tired, sleepy, busy, impatient, or intoxicated.

Human longing! We cannot cease desiring, and this is our glory, and our doom. Desire! It carries us and crucifies us, delivers us every new day to a battlefield where, on the eve, the battle was lost; but in sunlight, does it not look like a territory ripe for conquest, a place where - even though tomorrow we will die - we can build empires doomed to fade to dust, as if the knowledge we have of their imminent fall had absolutely no effect on our eagerness to build them now? We are filled with the energy of constantly wanting that which we cannot have, we are abandoned at dawn on a field littered with corpses, we are transported until our death by projects that are no sooner completed than they must be renewed. Yet how exhausting it is to be constantly desiring...

This is from a book called The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, and I will probably be mentioning it a lot in the near future. Besides being hands-down the best book I've ever read, there are so many thoughts and ideas to take away from it. It continues to teach long after the last page was turned. I thought this was the perfect passage to start things off as it introduces the very reason I choose art - and I mean all kinds of art - as my career choice and lifelong path. I'm going into a political science major, but all for the sake of reporting on it using words that can influence, sentences that are crafted in a way that hits all the right buttons. That's art. Why is it that we are happy to read something really good, and we marvel at the writer's talent for so effortlessly lightening our mood?

...We soon aspire to pleasure without the quest, to a blissful state without beginning or end, where beauty would no longer be an aim or a project but the very proof of our nature. And that state is art. When we gaze at a still life, when - even though we did not pursue it - we delight in its beauty, a beauty borne away by the magnified and immobile figuration of things, we find pleasure in the fact that there was no need for longing, we may contemplate something we need not want, may cherish something we need not desire. In this scene before our eyes - silent, without life or motion - a time exempt of projects is incarnated, perfection purloined from duration and its weary greed - pleasure without desire, existence without duration, beauty without will.

For art is emotion without desire.

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The beginning of the end

And here I go again.

I'm definitely planning to continue the blog during college - how else will my old friends know the agonizing details of the big fat crazy booty-shaking adventure that is life at NYU - but I feel like those posts will belong to a world entirely different from this one. Before I take that last step, there are still some entries left to be written. They'll be succinct and probably random, just like my last thoughts about all the years spent in Palo Alto.

The reason I've been MIA for a month is that I've been vacationing in Russia, but that's not why I haven't posted in such a long time. The truth is that there are so many things to say that I can't even start talking. Hopefully they'll come out bit by bit over the next few weeks because as I've said before, writing helps me deal with whatever's wrong, and yes I KNOW I shouldn't be complaining because I'm going to a great school in one of the most exciting cities in the world and yada yada, but since I'm saying something's wrong I must have a reason, right?

All I ask of you readers is that you don't dismiss my reasons. "You'll forget about it in a few months" sounds dandy, but at least consider the possibility that there's more to it. There may be more to it than the routinely cold feet or my habitual overthinking or, as Mr. Daren liked to say, my "teenage angst" (how strange to think that I'll never have to answer to him again). Or there may be not. Mr. Pandich, my old history teacher, liked to remind us of the kiss principle - keep it simple, stupid - whenever we wrote anything, long or short. So I'm keeping it simple and unedited. This is me, this is the end of a huge chunk of my life and the beginning of another, and this is how I say goodbye.

After I get the obvious out of the way, it gets complicated.




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List of the Week aka Just Friends, v. 2

This week, the post features a list of things I will miss about this boy. I was thinking of writing it entry-style like I did at the end of last year, but figured this way I'll kill both birds. After all, what better theme for a list of the week than a run down memory lane full of uncomfortable, awkward, kinda-makes-you-cringe-every-time-you-think-about-them sweet old memories? This time there's a lot more to say anyway.

Things I'll miss

1. Our ridiculous, at times completely inappropriate and at all times frustrating stubbornness.
2. Catching a glimpse of your head in-between people I really don't care about
3. (And you're not hard to spot, you have a total of like six shirts that you rotate every now and then)
4. Walking - more realistically, shoving and pushing - through the crowd to where you're standing, making quick expressionless eye contact (I am so breezy) and continuing on my way, wondering what thought crossed your mind in that fraction of a second
5. The jokes that didn't ever make much sense
6. Comfortable laughs
7. Simple, unspoken understanding
8. How I could always count on a conversation whenever my day was crappy (and that was like 28 days out of each month)
9. The long, long talks every night that were the reason homework wasn't finished and bedtime came at 1, sometimes 2
10. How I told you absolutely everything (too much, apparently)
11. Your sober, practical, slightly jealous point of view that I turned to when the girls' got overcliched and annoying
12. Your taste in music that I rarely liked
13. Your equally strange taste in movies that were usually overdone
14. Except for When Harry Met Sally, that one was good. And I remember that's not where everything started with us but it just made things more complicated.
15. Your hands, which were so rough from doing what you love to do (that's what she said (not really heheh (well kind of... but that's not what I mean)))
16. Your endless search for a fitting compliment that just ended up making me laugh anyway
17. How you could always notice the small things, but didn't always understand them
18. Watching you stand all cute and shy at Starbucks
19. How, no matter how amazing of a day I was having in New York, I couldn't wait to get to the hotel room to tell you all about it
20. Which reminds me: I'll miss calling you in the airport to say goodbye, in case our plane crashed
21. Directing my many AIM statuses at you
22. Singing (and I think it's time to agree that I am loads better)
23. Making faces when I should have been paying attention during a class with a teacher FROM THE DARKEST PITS OF HELL
24. The couch, your laptop burning your thighs
25. (I watched that show till the end, you know. The very last episode.)
26. Your face when it got really, really serious. Which, honestly, scared me a little
27. Your naive plans for us, for me. Didn't I tell you it was a one-way road I was on?
28. How you were outside your house barefoot in December talking to me on the phone because you couldn't do it otherwise
29. Most importantly, I'll miss how you forgave me. You forgave me for my little Christmas surprise, and you forgave me for what happened the day after.

But dammit, I wish you'd forgive me for my choice. Now that the year is winding down and I'm getting ready to pack my bags for the Dominican, there's nothing I want more than to leave on a good note. You say you're over it, but you clearly haven't moved past it. Obviously, things will not go back to normal; but they sure as hell aren't gonna move anywhere if you keep them at this stalemate. You've gotta start somewhere. One word, some effort. What you're afraid of won't even matter now since we may never see each other again. There'll be no more glances, no more smiles -

There’ll be no more grabbing my hand to pat it as one of our many inside jokes and no more sharing the worst pickup lines that involve touching body parts of the opposite sex (in appropriate places, of course). No more yelling across the hall about how great my ass looks in those jeans because you knew that made me insanely uncomfortable, and you’ve always enjoyed my misery.


I miss being just friends. I guess I never got used to it.



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Changing face

When I looked at the home page of my blog this morning, instead of feeling a rush of excitement at all the writing possibilities, I felt a whopping bleeeeeeeeeh. It just screamed (or more likely whimpered, as it dried up, withering) dread and depression. So I changed the header to something more fitting to the next few months that are opening up ahead of me.

For some reason I have a newfound obsession with the color lime - it is bright without being obnoxious, and at the same time cooling without looking dreary. I've got a bit of New York in there, although I doubt this header will last far into the year. The funky font is actually the same one they use for the headings in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, which is what my life reminds me of sometimes - a giant cartoon. Only less funny.

Countdown to trip: 9 days. I'm still trying to figure out a way to blog in internetless Turkmenistan.


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It starts in my toes, and I crinkle my nose

As we drove down the road that was more twisted than a pair of untangled headphones, he laughed at my “focus” face. Both eyes ahead, eyebrow muscles slightly strained. I could only afford to crank the car up to 40 – anything faster guaranteed a run-in with the mountain slope. We didn’t talk much on the way up; I remember “Birthday Sex” came on the radio and we sang along in our mutual tonedeafness. How easy it all was. I knew I was going to be home an hour late and I knew I would never hear the end of it, but I went anyway. So I pushed away all thoughts about what I was going to tell my mother and enjoyed the view that was starting to peek through the treetops.

The view was amazing. More stars than I’ve ever seen concentrated at one dot, and others thrown around like dandruff on a black suit. The entire bay area slept under a soft thin fog. A few lights here and there, but mostly it was black, with a barely perceptible red glow that I could only assume were the diffused street and bridge lights. It was surprisingly warm. Four other cars were parked next to ours, whose owners leaned against the railing smoking and laughing and talking and kissing. It was impossible to see more than five feet in front of us, so everyone had their privacy.

There, with my feet on the ledge, cigarette in one hand and his hood strings in the other, was the first time I felt a goodbye. What a perfect place to bid farewell to the last nine years in this town. This – the town, the warm air, the rough skin on his hands – felt like home. I did not think about talking as words glided effortlessly through my mouth, and everything that was said was just right. Just enough. Then again, there isn’t enough time in the world (especially not a week and two days) to say everything. But that’s just how it is, and how it always was.

“What will happen on this very day in five years?” I asked. He pressed his lips to mine. “You’ll be in my apartment, telling me about school,” he decided. “And I’ll hopefully be telling you about my school. Not hopefully – I will be telling you about how I accomplished my goal.” He blew the smoke out the side of his mouth so it wouldn’t get into my hair. “And what exactly is your goal?” “Easy – to be successful,” he shrugged. “I know I’ll get there in five years.” No, I thought. Easy was what we were doing now. It really only gets harder from here. But nothing else needed to be said, so we looked at each other in silence as the wind played with our jackets.

There are many times when I think I deserve better. Many memories of pain and disappointment, and countless promises to myself to never go down that road again. And while I’m sticking to that promise, part of me desperately wants this one last week. And that part of me wins the age-old battle of brain versus heart. Because if this is as good as it gets, then it gets pretty damn amazing. It brings charm and comfort to any ordinary thing. Where will I find comfort in the crazy, chaotic New York City?

And then I remember how much we’d give up for each other. Screwed could not even begin to describe our condition that night with our parents, and if you don’t count the drive there and back, the entire meeting lasted less than twenty minutes. Was it worth it? Hell to the fucking yeah.

I know I’ll get used to it, sometime in the next year, eventually. I just have no clue how I have to bear the separation now.
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My dirty little secret

Who has to know?
When we live such fragile lives
It's the best way we survive
I go around a time or two
Just to waste my time with you

Tell me all that you've thrown away
Find out games you don't wanna play
You are
The only one that needs to know


And I plan to keep it that way. Every time I replay the sequence of events in my head, I can't help but smile. I know it's wrong, but unfortunately it feels like the right kind of wrong and I'm doomed to always choose my heart over logic. I can't help myself.


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